In 1994 Steven Spielberg, after making his academy award-winning movie Schindler’s List one year earlier, established the Shoah Foundation (and its Institute for Visual History and Education) at the University of Southern California (USC): https://sfi.usc.edu/. The word “Shoah” in Hebrew means Holocaust. Its objective is to record video interviews of Holocaust survivors, so that their experiences and testimonies will not be lost as they pass away. Since then the USC Shoah Foundation has expanded its objective to include other genocides and atrocities around the world. Currently it already has 53,000 testimonies available in their visual history archive.
About three years ago, the USC Shoah Foundation established a collaboration with the “The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders” in Nanjing (also known as the Nanjing Massacre Museum) to record video interviews of the survivors of the Nanking Massacre. Currently it already has 30 testimonies of Nanking Massacre survivors in their visual history archive which are available for anyone in the world to see by accessing their website http://vhaonline.usc.edu/login.aspx and open an account for free.
In February 2016, USC Shoah Foundation sent a team from Los Angeles to NJ to record a video interview of our 93-year-old Nanking Massacre survivor Mr. Chu-Yeh Chang, a resident of Middletown, NJ. Mr. Chang’s testimony will be included in their visual history archive before the summer of 2016. For Mr. Chang’s written testimony, see the article in the NJ-ALPHA website: https://www.nj-alpha.org/Reference_Information_Articles/HTML_Articles/Chang_Chu_Yeh_English.html.
Tamaki Matsuoka, sometimes known as “The Conscience of Japan,” will be visiting NJ in mid-April 2016 for a series of special seminars to talk about her new book Torn Memories of Nanking and show her documentary film Torn Memories of Nanjing. The USC Shoah Foundation will also be sending a team from Los Angeles to NJ to record a video interview of Tamaki Masuoka, which will be included in their visual history archive for the Nanking Massacre.